What do you do?

When polishing, and you realize you need something stronger, do you tend to up the polish or the pad or both?

For example. This weekend I was using white lake pad and PO106ff(mild polish) and knew I was going to need more bite for a few sections. Would you go to orange pad with light polish, SIP(medium polish) and stick with the white pad, or change both then come back to finish with light polish and white pad?

Would love to get some feedback from others...

 

It's all based on preference. I usually go more aggressive polish on same pad. I still find po106ff goes best with white lc pad and SIP goes with orange.

 

It's just a judgement call. Some pads aren't meant to be used on certain polishes because of the cut though.

For example, you wouldn't use a finishing polish (106FF, PO85RD) with an orange or yellow pad because they're too heavy. Likewise, you wouldn't use a light pad with strong polish because it wouldn't cut.

 

I'm far from an expert, but my personal preference is to use only one product on a pad until i get a chance to clean them (and when i made my initial purchase, i ordered a ton of pads so i'm definitely not short of that)... so when i step it up to a stronger polish/compound, i would also change to a stronger pad to match... and in your example, i would definitely go to an orange pad for the SIP and then step it back down to PO106ff on a white pad...

 

I always recommend matching the aggressiveness of the polish with the aggressiveness of the pad. Reason being, if you use too aggressive of a pad with a lighter polish (ie. PO106FF with an orange light cutting pad), you may be filling in light holograms or hazing and not realizing it. If you're seeing improvement with the current polish / pad combo, then you can jump to a more aggressive pad for faster results. If the results are minimal with a current polish / pad combo, I'll jump to the next level of polish / pad combo.

I stick to these rules personally:

• Compounds use purple foamed wool, yellow cutting pad, orange light cutting pad
• Medium cutting polishes stick to purple foamed wool (on rotary) or orange light cutting pads or white polishing pads (on DA / random orbitals)
• Finishing polishes stick to white polishing pads, black finishing pads or blue fine finishing pads.

Also important to note, change your pad out for a new one after every few panels or at least clean it out. The more caked up the pad becomes, the harder it is to finish down as clean as the first panel when the pad is fresh. Excess product can lead to difficult product removal, not being able to break down the polish completely, and excessive dusting. I usually use about 4 pads per coat of polish, swapping them out roughly every 3 panels or so. On some paint I use even more.

Hope this helps.

George

 

Thanks everybody...especially since a few of the heavy hitter detailers chimed in.

Like concours said...I typically just think that PO106ff just works better with white while SIP works better with orange. Just wanted to see if I was missing out on some other tricks.

George your rules are perfect...thanks as always!